European Tribune - Community, Politics & Progress.

How to write better web copy

by Sven Triloqvist
Tue Jun 3rd, 2008 at 12:42:44 PM EST

This is a subjective precis of an article in .net magazine issue 176. The article talked to a lot of top web copywriters to distill their wisdom. The online version requires a subscription to read back issues.

First a bit of my own technical background

Most web visitors scan rather than read. That makes headlines, subheads and short ingresses or summaries at the top very important. When the visitor finds something that interests them they will read.
The splash page (the 'home' page) has to hook the visitor within a couple of seconds or they are off to another site. When they leave it is called 'bounce'. Bounce rates are among many types of information used to analyse site usage and improve the web experience. Any net tracker program - and there are quite a few basic ones available, from free to 1500 € a year licence - can tell you not only the bounce rate, but how long a visitor spends on any page, where they came from i.e the link that brought them to you, their ISP, the platform they are using and their browser, whether they are new visitors or repeats, their company name in the domain address, their location within a couple of hundred yards, and where they go to when they leave your site (ie the next URL. Some of these programs can also produce a CPC (or cost-per-click analysis).
CPC is derived from the cost of your advertising on a particular website (not your own), divided by the clickstream of any visitor who arrives at your site by a link from that particular website. A clickstream is the path of your clicks as you navigate through a website.
Visitors may also arrive from blogs, forums and other communities. If there are a lot of leads from a particular site, a company might send someone in to join the discussion. Be warned.
With this kind of software you can also see which are humans and which are bots or crawlers.
SEO (search engine optimization) has for 10 years been the El Dorado of the web. Search engines look for key words. They know the top key words, because they count and analyse what people search for. You can get more visitors to your website with careful consideration of the key words that you use in the copy - especially if they are present in headlines and subheads. And of course they have to be asci - a text web crawler cannot find a word in a picture. (Although there are other crawlers that can).
Clever use of keywords will greatly increase splash page visitors. Where they go from there depends on how interesting your splash page is.

But now a few guidelines from that article:

George Orwell would have been a good web copy writer
Keep it short and simple. Never use long words, always explain acronyms, and avoid jargon. Keep paragraphs short.
If you link, make sure (as we do) that the link 'button' contains enough information to give an idea of what is to be found at the end of the link.
Know and understand your audience and write for them.
Snappy contractions such as don't and you're and I'm are fine, forget what your teacher told you: see FT.
Try to speak in an active rather than passive voice
Spellcheck, then have someone else proofread. Spellcheck doesn't find everything - if the word is correctly spelt but in the wrong context, spellcheck won't find it.
Construction and content must be designed for usability and satisfaction
People are looking for information. Give it to them easily and fast.
Reading from a screen rather than paper is more tiring to the eyes. Ensure readability with a large enough font etc.
Cut to the chase and don't waffle. Even site 'welcomes' are now regarded as intrusive. Finns have a very direct way of speaking. They "Pass me the salt", they don't say "Could you possibly pass me the salt from over there please, my good chap?". That possibly explains Finnish Internet penetration ;-)
People have short attention spans.
Good writing is anything that makes people want to read it.

There are also mentions of page design and layout, and it is a very important subject that probably needs a diary of its own.

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How to write better web copy | 18 comments (18 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: How to write better web copy (4.00 / 3)

I am slightly better informed on the net tracking technologies lately because I have a new Finnish client with net tracker software accessible via your browser. I have spent a couple of days looking at how it works and what info it produces - certainly enough to understand how people use a site, and thus how to improve it.

We are going to redesign, rewrite and 'rebrand it' over the next month, after which I'll give you the url to see for yourself.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Tue Jun 3rd, 2008 at 01:24:50 PM EST

Re: How to write better web copy (none / 0)

Sounds a lot like Jakob Nielsen's Writing for the Web.

by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Tue Jun 3rd, 2008 at 01:39:11 PM EST

Re: How to write better web copy (4.00 / 2)

The reference books they mention are:

Writing for the web (Chambers desktop guides) by Susannah Ross
Writing for the web: a practical guide by Cynthia Jenny
The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Tue Jun 3rd, 2008 at 01:52:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: How to write better web copy (4.00 / 4)

'The Elements of Style' is also available online for free.

by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Tue Jun 3rd, 2008 at 02:17:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: How to write better web copy (4.00 / 4)

I'd add to the readability issue background color and screen color combinations. Many times it's not the font or font size but clashing colors that make the print look blurry no matter the size.

"You can't be a successful crook with a dishonest face, now, can you?" -The Fourth Doctor

by lychee (lychee9393 A yahoo D com) on Tue Jun 3rd, 2008 at 02:48:31 PM EST

Re: How to write better web copy (4.00 / 2)

As Ogilvie said - no white out text!

Design and layout of an effective website is job for a professional. The same for powerpoints - give visually illiterate people too many tools and they will produce tragedies of communication.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Tue Jun 3rd, 2008 at 03:17:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: How to write better web copy (none / 1)

It's a very .Net-y article, and not particularly insightful. Full disclosure: I've written for .Net, and may write for them again.

.Net is less than fascinated by Intertoob content which isn't trying to be a money machine. If you're goal is culture not commerce, the official line is that 'the readers won't be interested' - which is unfortunate because almost everything that's worthwhile on the web happens a long way from the money machines. At least until they co-opt it and try to turn a buck from it, usually some time after it's no longer interesting.

So it would be a shame to confuse ad copy writing with online culture. No one wants to read this kind of thing on blogs.

Possibly also interesting: what does it say that away from blog land, many of the most popular sites - YouTube, ICanHasCheeseBurger, LiveLeak, Yatahonga, pretty much anything with Flash games on it - barely use words at all?

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Jun 3rd, 2008 at 04:14:30 PM EST

Re: How to write better web copy (4.00 / 2)

Of course. The article deals with copywriting, which is a very specialized form of literature and only a small part of the web communication culture. But it is still interesting to a general ET audience (not the people here who actually DO copywrite) if it aids in the understanding of the commercial sites that we all access. It's a process and I find them all of interest.

I also found interesting the information that can be gathered by Net Trackers. I wasn't, until recently, aware of the full capabilities.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Tue Jun 3rd, 2008 at 05:11:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: How to write better web copy (none / 1)

I also found interesting the information that can be gathered by Net Trackers. I wasn't, until recently, aware of the full capabilities.

"The Company knows... everything that happened on the ship." - Bishop

- Jake

Ceterum censeo Chicago esse delendam

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Jun 4th, 2008 at 02:32:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: How to write better web copy (4.00 / 3)

Yes.
"Managed Response Customers".
(pauses to open the windows)

If nothing else, I found my old, mouldering copy of "Elements of Style", and it got me to pry the pages apart and begin re-reading it.
Egad. I hope I won't have to re-do all the good learning things I've done in my life before I'm 70--there just aint enough time.

Useful talking follows experience, the more experience the better. Talking that precedes experience is known as bullshit.

by geezer in Paris (risico at wanadoo(flypoop)fr) on Wed Jun 4th, 2008 at 02:04:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: How to write better web copy (4.00 / 3)

Know and understand your audience and write for them.

Yup. Though I think that one knocks most of the others over the head. Except:

Good writing is anything that makes people want to read it.

Re-yup.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Tue Jun 3rd, 2008 at 04:37:21 PM EST

Re: How to write better web copy (4.00 / 2)

Thanks very much, Sven. Gotta make dinner, so will comment tomorrow--or later--but I value your experience particularly.

Useful talking follows experience, the more experience the better. Talking that precedes experience is known as bullshit.

by geezer in Paris (risico at wanadoo(flypoop)fr) on Wed Jun 4th, 2008 at 01:43:35 PM EST

Re: How to write better web copy (none / 1)

My pleasure Geezer ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Jun 4th, 2008 at 02:36:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Geezer (none / 0)

You might be interested in this:

Mobile phones expose human habitse

The whereabouts of more than 100,000 mobile phone users have been tracked in an attempt to build a comprehensive picture of human movements...

I worked with a client 10-12 years ago on the first of these location technologies. They had statistical software that could take the triangulated data from three mobile nodes and work out with sufficient accuracy where a mobile was most of the time, within about 20 metres (then). All mobiles give off regular (and free) 'here I am' signals. So if you had access to the data, the rest was 'free'. It was a car protection system.

The results showed that most people's movements follow a precise mathematical relationship - known as a power law.
"That was the first surprise," he told BBC News. The second surprise, he said, was that the patterns of people's movements, over short and long distances, were very similar: people tend to return to the same few places over and over again.

Well knock me down with a feather, I'd never have guessed it.

For example, Professor John Cleland of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Disease (LSHTM) said the study could be of use to people monitoring the spread of contagious diseases.
"Avian flu is the obvious one," he told BBC News. "When an outbreak of mammalian infectious airborne disease hits us, the movement of people is of critical concern."....
....For example, Nokia have put forward an idea to attach sensors to phones that could report back on air quality. The project would allow a large location-specific database to be built very quickly.

This is interesting because a former client of mine specialized in all manner of sensors, rigged in a box with a gsm phone module. The sensors were for gas, smoke, temperature etc etc - about 20 different ones. They were for remote installation ie you put one of these boxes out in the field (the gsm battery power lasts a long time without a display and key input). And at programmable intervals, the sensor records current state and sends the data via very short text message. Collecting and collating this data from many boxes, with auto-alerts when data from any location went outside prescribed bounds.

BTW I downloaded Seismac for my laptop. If your mac laptop has a motion/gravity sensor, the this little app does seismic readings all day long if you want. Some vulcanologist is working on a plan to network this info from millions of laptops around the world.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Jun 4th, 2008 at 03:07:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Geezer (4.00 / 2)

Yeah, I ran into the same piece- Pandora rides again.

Interesting, to say the least. The potential data stream from that sort of deeply person(al) bugging/tracking is incredible--always has been. As well as scary.

When I tended bar at a place near the University while I took post-grad courses in sociology and social psychology, I used to fantasize about bugging every bar table in the joint, and analyzing the web of relationships, the ebb and flow of ideas, the positional maneuvering, the unedited emergence of a deeper set of political and social beliefs- the comments when a black duo was on stage (me and Smitty)--
but I never had any doubt as to the Orwellian the way that data would inevitably be used.
Some boxes hold great treasure--but nasty little snakes, too.

Useful talking follows experience, the more experience the better. Talking that precedes experience is known as bullshit.

by geezer in Paris (risico at wanadoo(flypoop)fr) on Fri Jun 6th, 2008 at 12:04:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Geezer (none / 0)

Perhaps a system in which the cell phone carrier voluntarily attaches the sensor package, and accepts the other forms of monitoring, ---but then how to guarantee that the sample is representative?
Stil----sooo tempting, so worth thinking through.

Useful talking follows experience, the more experience the better. Talking that precedes experience is known as bullshit.

by geezer in Paris (risico at wanadoo(flypoop)fr) on Fri Jun 6th, 2008 at 12:10:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]

We have yet to learn that, (4.00 / 2)

let alone recognize when, knowledge can have too high a price.

It is like Psyche lighting the oil lamp--before you do it, stop and think! Not only is it, "What do you want to know?" but more importantly, "What will happen when you (try to) find out?"

The bill is itemized: 1) What is the price (consequences) of asking? 2) What happens to you when you have the answer a) because of how it changes you and, b) how it changes others when they know you know?

In your example you are thinking of a whole technology, and of course the problem is summarized: How can (will) it be (ab)used?

To the case at hand: Not only do cell phones cause brain cancer, but they enable the government--or anybody with money and access--to trace your movements and model your behavior, collectively or individually, to the advantage of . . . who? What's not to like!

by Gaianne on Fri Jun 6th, 2008 at 01:33:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: We have yet to learn that, (none / 1)

In my universe the noosphere will replace representative government.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Fri Jun 6th, 2008 at 04:04:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]

How to write better web copy | 18 comments (18 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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